FIFA 12: Pro Tips from the Dev Team

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Getting ready for the next FIFA? Want to know how to dominate?

By Cam Shea

IGN recently caught up with David Rutter, the line producer of FIFA, and hit him with a very simple proposal – give IGN's readers some tips to help them prepare for this year's game. What do they need to know? What has changed? He gave us some great info, so check it out!

ON THE BALL

David Rutter: FIFA 12 is very different to previous years. We've put in two big features that change how the game works – one when you have the ball, one when you don't. In that order, precision dribbling is a very high fidelity control system when you're on the ball. What that means is – rather than you needing to sprint everywhere and outpace people, like you might have done in previous FIFAs, this year you can actually use guile and dexterity to outsmart your opponent.

In previous FIFAs – from 10 onwards – we had 360 degree dribbling, which gave you directional freedom. With precision dribbling you have distance freedom, so all of a sudden you can take touches in any direction and over any distance – obviously not crazy far, although we do have a double knock-on now, so for skillful players you can double tap the right stick and it'll do a double knock-on, which is great if you've got a very fast sprinter.

FIFA 12, now featuring 'good touch', not to be confused with bad.

The key to it is, when you are close to players, you will automatically drop down into precision dribbling based on the context of the situation. However, you can make it happen on purpose when you want. It's on the left bumper/L1 button at the moment, so you have pace control on the left trigger/L2 and precision dribbling on the left bumper/L1. Holding that down will drop you into that and if you have a skillful dribbler he'll be able to sell defenders in multiple directions so you can jink about, even in the middle of the pitch, which is kind of useful, and then if you want you can sprint round that player dropping into standard sprint.

OFF THE BALL

David Rutter: Tactical defending is massively different to previous defending systems, so where we used to have a mindless button press that would launch the defenders at the ball, that doesn't happen anymore. For anyone who's played FIFA in the past, that's going to be the big change that they notice immediately. So you press that button and you drop down into contain and track the ball. You don't actually try and tackle, unless the person with the ball literally comes so close to you that it will automatically tackle. That's on a standard button press.

So – two key things to defending. One is – reading the play and not overreacting. If you overreact and you try to tackle with the tackle button a lot, what will end up happening is, to balance the game and make it exciting and interesting, when you press that tackle button and you launch a standing tackle or you try and block the ball, there's a recovery from that animation, so there's a period of time where you won't be able to do anything about anything, so make sure you're only doing it when you know you should. Timing is key.

That's one part of it. The other thing is, all the standard jockey moves and running jockey – all of that stuff remains. Secondary press for a defender is on the right bumper/R1 button, so you can still do that, but again, they won't launch a tackle, it's just coverage – it's cover off. So you can hold that and the AI will track the player with the ball and try and put him into a disadvantageous position while you can maneuver yourself to try and close down passing lanes. That's how I defend.

USING YOUR PLAYERS EFFECTIVELY

David Rutter: Last year we had Personality Plus… this year we've taken it one step further, with what we call Pro Player Intelligence. The spiel is that it's the next generation of player AI, and if a player has one of our Pro Player Intelligence traits there are gameplay effects. A good example is Peter Crouch. He's very tall. He isn't necessarily the best header of the ball in the world, but because he's so tall, he can beat nearly everyone in a header, so we call him an 'aerial threat'.

This has three major effects. When you're playing against him, the team around him are going to try to play the ball to his head more frequently. If you are playing career mode, each of the different teams you're playing against will have a different personality based on these Pro Player Intelligence traits, so you can't always play the same tactics against each team, week in week out in career mode anymore. You actually have to think about what you're doing, so that adds a nice depth to career mode. And lastly, when you're playing as a virtual pro, the CPU AI teammates around you will know what your traits are as well, that you've unlocked through performing tasks in the game.

So if you unlock an aerial threat trait or a playmaker trait or a long distance shooter trait etc., don't just unlock it and apply it to your player assuming that it's going to automatically do stuff. You have to play appropriately for it to work. So if you're an aerial threat try and get in the box. If you're a playmaker, make sure you're getting into space to receive the ball. If you're a long distance shooter, hang back just outside the goal and wait for the ball to be cut back to you – don't expect it to happen just by magic. You have to perform the role.

THE YOUTH ACADEMY SYSTEM

David Rutter: This year is massively improved. We've got tonnes of general tweaks and tunes and improvements throughout the game. The big, key innovation – and this is where my tip comes in – is in the youth academy system. We have a full youth academy system where you can hire a scout and send them off around the world to try and find players to suit whatever it is that you want. Make sure you do that. It's particularly useful for lower league teams. Some of the scouts are very expensive, so you can upgrade your scouts throughout the year if you have the money to do so, that's a good idea. Send them to far off places, try and get some young talent to come through.

There's two options available to you: you develop them and then sell them, or you can develop them and keep them and bolster the strength of your squad. For people like me that want to manage a lower tier team that doesn't have a lot of money and may be struggling to develop a strong squad, the youth academy is where it's at.

SUPPORT YOUR ACTUAL CLUB!

David Rutter: EA Sports Football Club is a new thing we're doing this year. It's an innovative new service where you pledge your allegiance to a team. You create a profile and basically your progress from FIFA forever more will be tracked. You get XP for performing things in the game – playing a match, even putting the disc in the tray. The key thing here is it's a good way for you to connect with your friends and the millions of FIFA gamers around the world. There's one key part of it, which is Support Your Club.

What you do is pledge your allegiance to the team you support. I support Leicester City. They're not very good in real life, but they're okay, and I want to say 'I'm a Leicester City fan'. I do that, and everything I do in the game that earns me XP also earns XP for Leicester City. It doesn't matter who I play with. It doesn't matter what game mode I'm playing or anything like that. If I earn a hundred XP in a day, it goes into the Leicester City pot for that day. The total pot of Leicester City points is divided by the number of Leicester City fans, and gives an indication of the skill and dedication of a Leicester City fan.

Your club needs you! Unless you're a terrible player, in which case you should support their rivals.

The tip I would give people is – don't all go and pick Barcelona as your favourite team. Don't go and pick Real Madrid or Manchester United – unless they are genuinely your favourite team. You can pick any of the teams in the game and say you support them. I'm going to choose Leicester City because it's my club. That might sound like a disadvantage but it isn't, because I'll still earn the points playing as Barcelona and playing as Real Madrid, so it's an opportunity for you to show how good the fans of the club you support in real life are, rather than what teams you play with in the game.

A week is a season in Support Your Club, and then at the end of the week teams will be promoted and relegated based on the real rules of the league, so if the Leicester City fans are good, we go to the top of the championship, we get promoted into the premier league. Manchester United may have a million fans, but if they only play one day a week and they're rubbish? They'll get relegated, relegated, relegated and you could see a totally different version of reality based on the skill of the fans.

Here's a tip for this part of the game: create a Facebook group. Do something to get yourselves somewhat organised and commit to trying to do it. If someone spots that your team's about to get relegated, then let the other fans know! I think it's going to become quite a story throughout the year.

SET UP ULTIMATE TEAM NOW

David Rutter: At launch we'll have FIFA Ultimate Team on the disc. For those people that want to get into it or have played Ultimate Team before, on the 20th of September the website will launch, allowing you to pre-prepare your ultimate team. My tip would be – get online on the 20th of September and you can start building your team. If you're a returning Ultimate Team player you can get some free packs. If you're not a returning player, then why not put your FIFA 11 disc in now, get FIFA Ultimate Team going, you become a returning player, so then you're sorted.

There's no i in 'team', but there's a u in 'ultimate team'. And an i. Hmm.